Chirped Pulse Amplification

Abstract

Gerard Mourou and Donna Strickland were jointly awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing the use of chirped pulse amplification (CPA) as a means to raise ultrafast laser pulses to extreme power levels without destroying the gain material or other optics. They first demonstrated CPA more than thirty years ago. The fundamental importance of CPA is reflected in the fact that today all the commercial ultrafast lasers that produce energy per pulse in the µJ to mJ range rely on CPA. In this article, we briefly review the importance of CPA and take a look at three very different amplifiers that enable applications in fields as diverse as femtochemistry, terahertz imaging, attosecond physics, 2D spectroscopy, biology, and materials processing.